Zenko Hackathon Brings the Kind of Challenge that NA Team Loves

Meet Team NA:

The three-man team that calls itself NA (no, definitely not N/A!) is building a Mongo DB Connector using Zenko. Each of the three team members, Guoxin Li, Artem Valmykov and Vitaly Tenigin have been students at 42 for more than a year. Guoxin and Vitaly live in the school’s dormitory; Art commutes, but occasionally crashes in the dorms. All three of them love a challenge. They’re learning a new language—Node.js—as they build with it but they say it’s fun – and they love the competitive spirit. They also say that the Scality engineers who came to help are awesome – super helpful and friendly (of course!).

Guoxin came to the U.S. from China ten years ago. He earned a Chemical Engineering degree from that little school up the road, U.C. Berkeley, and even passed the notoriously difficult EIT exam, but his passion is programming, so he left all of that behind for 42. He loves starting with nothing and building things from scratch. This is his third hackathon – he loves them because of the fast-paced creativity.

Art surprised me by telling me (in Russian-accented English) that he speaks Chinese. Originally from Russia, he earned a degree in psychology from Transbaikal University, and lived in China for ten years. He came to the U.S. a little more than a year ago and discovered 42 shortly after he arrived. He joined the school in June, 2016, as one of 42’s first students on the Fremont Campus. He lives in San Jose with his wife.

Vitaly has visited most parts of the Continental U.S. in the course of carrying out his job when he was a long-haul truck driver. He studied programming in Russia, but hadn’t yet finished his degree when moved to the U.S. nine years ago. He loves hackathons for the opportunity to learn something new – and that he is.